Monopoly is stupid

I got PWNED at Monopoly. We played last week and it was a fairly lengthy game and we all were at one point doing pretty well. The game lasted a good couple hours and much fun was had. Thursday night rolls around and we decide to all play again at Mike's place and I got steamrolled. I had only 3 property, no money, and landed on every hotel I could find. This may seem silly, but when you've recently played the game, suddenly it becomes a lot more serious. Just had to vent.

Back to Europe stuff. Germany is the razzmatazz. The weather has been awesome. Only one day of rain in the last two weeks (and it was barely drizzling) and it has been between the mid 40s and high 60s. WOOOOO. I guess after 4 and a half years of enjoying Pittsburgh's never-ending winters and Houston's sauna-esque humidity in the summers, it was about time I got to experience a nice moderate climate. Running here is amazing. I suppose it helps that the scenery is pretty nice too.

Last week was pretty uneventful (save for the Monopoly, but lets forget about that). Friday was the big night out for the weekend. My entire class along with two of Mike's Tunisian flatmates went out to a German brewery. Heres a picture of most of us:

Quite an international bunch with 4 continents and 8 countries represented.

Much fun was had as we all spoke in German only. This was interesting at times since some of us are at varying levels of speak ability. Either was fun was had. Several of us topped off the night with a Doner Kebab. What is that you ask? Probably one of the most amazing things ever created. I had heard of it before but I never experienced it until now. It is perfect. It is sliced spit rotated/cooked lamb meat inside of a pita with lettuce tomato onions cabbage and a yogurt sauce. It is everything you want and more. This is what it looks like

It is huge in Europe but even more so in Germany due to the large population of Turks living here. I simply can't get enough of this stuff and neither can the locals. It is easier to find a Doner Kebab vendor here than to find a Starbucks in Manhattan. It it the Tacos al Pastor of this continent. I would move here for it.

Saturday Nelsen, Yoorina (a Korean girl in our class), Mike, and I decide to go to Dilsberg. It's a tiny town situated on top of a mountain and about a 30 minute drive away. We stop at a local grocery, assemble picnic supplies and go on our way. The entire way there we listen to a band called Vitralic (some form of techno). The scenery on the way was pretty. We drove along the Neckar River and saw all the small picturesque towns along the way. Heres a picture from above:

Tiny tiny village.

It was quite a vertical climb up but we finally got there and were able to see the entire Rhine-Neckar valley from the top of the castle. It was pretty cool.

We picnic'd out and then an older gentleman with a big playful dog joined us and we got to play with it. He was nice and we were able to speak enough broken German to make small talk. Right now is kind of the off-season for tourism and Dilsberg isn't a huge attraction so we were the only people there. We ended up just chilling there for about two hours before walking around and exploring the castle. Yoorina took this picture of me without me knowing:

Weee

All of us were fairly exhausted afterwards and called it a night. Sunday was a normal relaxing day of doing homework and walking around in the sun. I learned a German nursery rhyme today and was pretty proud of myself. Will try to update with pictures soon.